JP2019069424A - Printer and printing method and printed matter - Google Patents

Abstract

To provide a printer for forming a functional pattern by on-demand printing using no plate which eliminates a need of formation of a print ink leading to functional deterioration as a functional material and a need of a printing plate and a mask plate, and to provide a printing method.SOLUTION: A printer is used to form a pattern on a substrate by atomizing a desired material and includes at least an atomizing device which generates an atomized material atomized from a material liquid including the material, a heating device which heats at least a part of a base material, and a mist supply device which supplies the mist material to the base material.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1

Description

  BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and printing method capable of printing a pattern by misting an ink material.

  In printing, a large amount of images and characters have been reproduced by applying ink to a printing plate and transferring the ink to a medium such as paper. In conventional plate printing, efforts are made to accurately transfer an ink pattern formed on a printing plate to a medium, and many printing methods have been proposed.

On the other hand, plateless printing includes, for example, inkjet and electrophotographic methods, and arbitrary pattern data can be printed on demand without using a printing plate.
Furthermore, there is a mist coating technology in which the material is formed into fine droplets and coated. The mist coating technique is a method of coating a substrate with a material liquid in the form of a mist of physically small droplets. There is no need to mix the materials, and it is possible to coat higher purity materials, which is advantageous when forming a pattern of functional materials. In order to obtain a film patterned by this mist coating technique, a method of forming a pattern film by mist coating through a mask plate having a pattern of through holes is used.

  Moreover, in the mist method of patent document 1, the pattern which consists of a hydrophilic part and a water repellent part is beforehand formed in a base material, mist is sprayed on a base material, mist adheres to a hydrophilic part, and a water repellent part There is proposed a method of forming a pattern without using a mask plate by preventing adhesion of mist.

WO 2015/064438

  However, when it is intended to pattern functional materials, conventional plate printing and plate-less ink jet technology mixes blends in addition to the main materials having functions in order to obtain ink properties suitable for the printing process. In the pattern after printing, there is a problem that the purity of the target material is lowered and the functional characteristics are lowered. In addition, in the electrophotographic system, it is necessary to make the material into a toner, and it is necessary to cover the main agent with a material for charge control, so it is not suitable for forming a functional pattern.

  And in patterning from mist formation, it is necessary to use a mask plate, and there is a problem that a pattern restriction by a penetration hole and cost of mask production are added. Further, in the method of Patent Document 1, although the mask plate becomes unnecessary, it is necessary to provide in advance a process of forming a pattern of a hydrophilic portion and a water repellent portion on the substrate side, and the problem of cost increase is not solved. The

  In view of such a problem, the problem to be solved by the present invention is that the functional pattern by plate-free on-demand printing does not require printing ink formation accompanied by performance reduction as a functional material and does not require printing plate or mask plate. Printing apparatus and printing method for forming the same.

In order to solve the above problems, a first invention of the present invention is
A printing apparatus for forming a desired material into a mist and forming a pattern on a substrate,
A mist forming apparatus for generating a mist forming material formed into a mist from a material liquid containing the material;
A heating device for heating at least a part of the substrate;
And at least a mist supplying device for supplying the mist material to the substrate.
It is a printing device characterized by the above.

The second invention of the present invention is
In the printing device according to the first aspect of the invention,
It further comprises a substrate transport mechanism capable of transporting the substrate parallel to the printing direction,
The said mist supply apparatus and the said heating apparatus are arrange | positioned in the position which opposes on both sides of the said base material, It is a printing apparatus characterized by the above-mentioned.

The third invention of the present invention is
In the printing device according to the first or second invention,
The heating device is a printing device characterized in that a printing pattern is formed on the substrate by heating the substrate in conjunction with printing pattern data.

The fourth invention of the present invention is
By using the printing apparatus according to any one of the first to third inventions,
Producing a mist forming material in which a material liquid containing a desired material is misted;
A step of ejecting the mist forming material on a substrate on which a heating unit and a non-heating unit are present;
Attaching the material only to the non-heated portion;
And drying or baking.
It is a printing method characterized by forming a printing pattern which consists of the above-mentioned material.

The fifth invention of the present invention is
By repeatedly using the printing method described in the fourth invention,
It is a printed matter characterized in that a printing pattern of any different material is laminated on a substrate.

The sixth invention of the present invention is
By repeatedly using the printing method described in the fourth invention,
It is a printed matter characterized by laminating a printing pattern by arbitrary different pattern data on a substrate.

  According to the present invention, it is possible to form a pattern with high material purity based on a mist coating technique, and enable printing without plate and mask required and plate-free on-demand functional pattern formation.

It is a schematic diagram which shows schematic structure of the printing apparatus of this invention. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the printing method of this invention. It is a schematic diagram for demonstrating the printing method of this invention. FIG. 1 is a schematic view of a printing apparatus comprising on-demand thermal latent image formation according to the present invention.

  The printing apparatus and printing method according to the present invention will be described in detail below. The present invention is not limited to only the contents described below, and is intended to be included in the present invention as long as it has similar technical features.

  In the mist coating technique according to the present invention, a material liquid in which a material is dissolved or dispersed in a solvent is physically made into fine droplets and brought into a mist state capable of being transported by transport air, thereby being transported and attached to a substrate Technology to form The mist formation is to bring the physical volume into the form of miniaturization, and the material liquid is in the state of being refined as it is in the liquid phase.

Next, the present invention will be described using the drawings.
FIG. 1 is a schematic view showing the basic configuration of the printing apparatus of the present invention.
First, as shown in FIG. 1A, a temperature difference is generated on the base material 100 by a heating device 110 capable of partially heating the base material 100 as a printing medium. In the mist coating, the material is formed into mist droplets, and transported and adhered to a substrate to form a film. In the present invention, by heating a part of the substrate 100 by the heating device 110, a portion with high temperature (the heating portion 102) and a portion not to be heated (the non-heating portion 101) are formed.

  FIG. 1B shows the configuration of a mist supply device 300 that generates mist and transports it to the base material 100. The material liquid 200 of mist is misted by the mist forming apparatus 300 to generate the mist forming material 210, and the gas is supplied by the carrier gas supply 320 into the mist conveying path 310, and the mist forming material 210 passes through the mist conveying path 310. Is provided on the substrate 100.

  When the mist forming material 210 is transported onto the base material 100, the heat of the heating unit 102 is transmitted to the mist forming material 210 when approaching the base material 100, thereby generating the Leidenfrost effect in the vicinity of the heating unit 102. Do. By the Leidenfrost effect, the volatilization of the solvent constituting the mist forming material 210 proceeds, and it gets in between the base material 100 and the mist forming material 210 and prevents the contact with the base material 100. Therefore, the heating temperature needs to be at least a temperature at which the Leidenfrost effect occurs.

  Accordingly, in the portion where the temperature of the substrate 100 is high (the heating portion 102), the adhesion of the mist forming material 210 is eliminated, and the mist forming material 210 adheres to the non-heating portion 101 where the temperature is not high. Thus, the pattern from the mist formation material 210 can be formed into a film by the non-heating part 101 by heating the arbitrary places based on printing pattern data.

Since the mist forming material 210 which has not adhered is discharged at the outlet of the supply device, a collecting device may be installed here to collect the mist material and reduce stray mist to prevent re-adhesion.
Although not shown, the position of the substrate is at the upper side, the mist material is supplied from the lower side, and gravity does not cause the droplets of the misting material 210 repelled from the substrate by the Leidenfrost effect to reattach. It may be configured to support.

  Although FIG. 1 shows the case of fixed heating in a block, the heating device 110 is, for example, a heating control mechanism capable of arbitrarily heating based on print pattern data using a variable data heat writing device such as a thermal head. The heating / non-heating part can be variably controlled each time printing is performed, and pattern formation can be made directly from arbitrary print pattern data. The heating device 110 may be any device as long as it can partially heat the base material 100, and the present invention is not limited to the heating means of the heating device 110.

  2 and 3 show the steps of the printing method of the present invention.

  In FIG. 3A, the material liquid 200 is introduced onto the mist forming apparatus 300, and the mist forming material 210 is generated. The material liquid 200, which is a starting material liquid, is made of a material composed of a solvent and a solute, and the solute may be a material that is soluble in the solvent or a material that is dispersed in the solvent. The solvent can be used as long as it is a material that is vaporized in response to the heat propagation from the substrate heating unit 102. When using a soluble solute material, if the misting material 210 approaches the substrate 100 and is vaporized first when the Leidenfrost effect occurs, the vaporized material of the solute material may contact and deposit on the substrate It is desirable that the evaporation temperature of the solute material be equal to or lower than the evaporation temperature of the solvent because of the nature.

  The material liquid 200 is microdropletized by the mist formation device 300. The mist forming apparatus 300 includes, for example, droplet mist generation by an ultrasonic transducer and a droplet generation method by atomization. In the present invention, an existing device capable of forming a droplet size that can be transported by a transport gas can be used other than the above-described methods, but a mist generation device using an ultrasonic transducer is preferably used. Also, a mechanism for trapping coarse mist droplets and aligning the droplet sizes may be inserted into the flow path.

  The mist forming material 210 in which the material is turned into mist droplets by the mist forming device 300 is conveyed by the carrier gas or the like to the substrate 100 in which the temperature difference is formed by the pattern heating by the heating device 110 (FIG. 3 (b)) ~ (C)). At this time, in the heating unit 102, the droplets of the mist forming material 210 do not adhere due to the Leidenfrost effect described above, and the droplets adhere to the non-heating unit 101 (= mist particles 220) (FIG. 3D). When adhesion of the mist particles 220 in a desired amount is completed on the non-heated portion 101, the substrate 100 with the mist particles 220 adhered is taken out from the atmosphere of the mist forming material 210, and the solvent is evaporated to form a film (FIG. )). It is also possible to heat the material according to the material type to form a fired film.

It is FIG. 2 which showed the above procedure as a flowchart.
Thus, the thermal latent image pattern consisting of the heated portion and the non-heated portion is developed with the mist forming material. Since the non-heated portion becomes a film forming phenomenon similar to that of the conventional mist coating, the pattern formed on the non-heated portion forms a film equivalent to the mist coating. Moreover, it is also possible to form a laminate of various materials by repeating this process while changing the material.

FIG. 4 shows an apparatus configuration for forming a mist film pattern on demand.
According to the method shown in FIG. 3, it is difficult to form a structure in which the pattern changes continuously on the substrate because the heating portion is fixed, but the pattern sequentially rewritten by the configuration of FIG. 4 is continuously patterned become able to.

  That is, in the device configuration shown in FIG. 4, the thermal head 120 is provided below the base 100, and the mist supply device 330 is provided at a position facing the thermal head 120 across the base 100. A drying device 400 for drying the mist to form the material film 230 is provided on the side of the film. Also, although the thermal head 120 and the mist supply device 330 are fixed, the substrate 100 can be continuously moved in parallel with the substrate plane (in the direction of the arrow in the figure) by the substrate moving means (not shown). it can.

The mist forming material 210 generated by the mist forming device (not shown in FIG. 4) is discharged from the slit-like nozzle of the mist supply device 330 toward the substrate 100. At this time, the substrate is controlled at an arbitrary speed and moved in the arrow direction. In the discharged portion, a non-heated portion and a heated portion are formed at the mist discharge port by pattern heating by the thermal head 120, and mist particles 220 are formed only in the non-heated portion.
The width of the head portion of the thermal head 120 and the width of the mist supply device 330 are preferably substantially equal. If either width is too wide, a gap may be formed in the heating portion or the heating temperature may be uneven.

The substrate 100 is moved by controlling the moving speed appropriately so that the material film 230 has a desired film thickness, and the mist particles 220 for which the pattern formation is completed enter the drying apparatus 400 and the solvent is blown away. Is formed. Repeating this enables variable pattern formation using a continuous substrate. Further, by arranging a plurality of such device configurations continuously, it is also possible to form a laminated body in which a plurality of material films are laminated on a substrate in line.

  In the present invention, although the pattern heating method is not particularly limited, it is possible to use, for example, an existing thermal head, an LED array or a laser line scanning heating method.

  As described above, according to the printing apparatus and printing method of the present invention, the material liquid in which the material is dissolved or dispersed is formed into a mist, and development is performed using a thermal latent image. It becomes possible to form. Further, by synchronizing the thermal latent image and the mist supply and forming the thermal latent image from arbitrary variable data, it becomes possible to form an on-demand pattern of the mist material on the substrate. Furthermore, by repeatedly patterning the process of the present invention with different materials, it is possible to print a laminated structure of different material patterns.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 100 base material 101 non-heating part 102 heating part 110 heating apparatus 120 thermal head 200 material liquid 210 mist forming material 220 mist particle 230 material film 300 mist forming apparatus 310 mist conveyance path 320 conveyance gas supply 330 mist supply apparatus 400 drying apparatus

Claims (6)

A printing apparatus for forming a desired material into a mist and forming a pattern on a substrate,
A mist forming apparatus for generating a mist forming material formed into a mist from a material liquid containing the material;
A heating device for heating at least a part of the substrate;
And at least a mist supplying device for supplying the mist material to the substrate.
A printing apparatus characterized by In the printing device according to claim 1,
It further comprises a substrate transport mechanism capable of transporting the substrate parallel to the printing direction,
The printer according to claim 1, wherein the mist supply device and the heating device are disposed at opposite positions across the substrate. In the printing device according to claim 1 or 2,
A printing apparatus, wherein the heating device forms a print pattern on the base by heating the base in conjunction with print pattern data. A printing apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 3
Producing a mist forming material in which a material liquid containing a desired material is misted;
A step of ejecting the mist forming material on a substrate on which a heating unit and a non-heating unit are present;
Attaching the material only to the non-heated portion;
And drying or baking.
A printing method comprising: forming a printing pattern made of the material. The printing method according to claim 4 is repeatedly used,
Printed matter characterized in that a printing pattern of any different material is laminated on a substrate. The printing method according to claim 4 is repeatedly used,
Printed matter characterized by laminating a printing pattern by arbitrary different pattern data on a substrate.

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